Arm Balance Research Articles

The Multiple Triangle: Experiences in Discovery

Imagine an arm balance with a pan at each end. On one pan we have the enemy of the young—boredom; on the other pan, the guardian angel of the young—discovery. We want the balance to be tipped in favor of the guardian angel, but as every teacher knows, this is not an automatic result. It takes a lot of planning and hard work. To counter boredom the teacher must create a learning environment for the student that is exciting, useful for maintaining basic skills, and fun to explore. In order to excite and involve students we must present a well-balanced program that con tains some novel, challenging, and surprise-filled problems. In the process of solving the problems, the students learn the basic skills through their experiences in gathering data.

On various versions of the defective coin problem

The problem of ascertaining the minimum number of weighings which suffice to determine the defective coin in a set of N coins of the same appearance, given an equal arm balance and the information that there is precisely one defective coin present, is well known. A large number of ingenious solutions exist, some based upon sequential procedures and some not. The problem in the case where there are known to be two or more defective coins is far more complex because we cannot draw any simple definite conclusions at the end of a single test. We shall analyze this in detail in the following paper. The purpose of this paper is to indicate a systematic way in which the theory of dynamic programming can be used to provide a computational solution to the determination of optimal and suboptimal testing policies. We shall illustrate this by means of some numerical results obtained using a digital computer.

Inertial Equal Arm Balance with Thyristor Indicator Circuit

First Page

Evaluation of Motor Learning When Performance Levels are Heterogeneous

Abstract In three motor learning experiments (jumping, speed of arm movement and balancing), raw learning scores are unrelated to final degree of skill but are negatively correlated with initial performance. Using the method of residuals to hold statistically constant the influence of initial skill, it is possible to compute derived learning scores which are unrelated to initial skill and at the same time substantially correlated with learning and also with post-learning performance. Since these scores estimate the individual learning that would have occurred if each person had started at the same level of initial skill, they should prove practically useful as true measures of motor educability. The method can readily be applied to the construction of tabular norms in which several variables must be taken into account. It has also been used to define an endurance index.

The Equal Arm Balance

The Equal Arm Balance